Five Things that Few People Know about Percy
by Tastytime
Summary: Five things that are kept well hidden from most people. A human figure, revealed in five stages, from scholarship to sex. Slash Oliver x Percy


**Title**: Five Things that Few People Know about Percy Weasley

**Fandom**: Harry Potter

**Rated:** Probable R for scenes of a sexual nature, language

**Pairing**: Oliver x Percy, hinted PenelopePercy

**Summary**: Five things that are kept well hidden from most people. A human figure, revealed in five stages, from scholarship to sex. Slash Oliver x Percy

**A/N:** Hit me like a bolt of lightening, hopefully with less destructive effect. Enjoy!

**1. **Percy studies willingly and always has done since he was a small child. Knowledge is Power, and Power is Everything. He has to fight to master the concepts that come so easily to true genius, and formidable magical talent, but what he lacks in shining ability he makes up for with pure will power, the sort that can make you study fourteen hours a day, and forget about food. The sort that keeps a child in doors preferring to read than play, and which perhaps fosters in him a hardness of soul, and ironess of resolve that he would not acquire from playing pig-a-back, or Exploding Snap.

He fights his demons the hard way, and when they refuse to leave, he grows around them, accommodates them within his soul and mind, and allows them to shape him, more than he knows. And yet he has a rare gift that is not matched by its fellow. He is possessed of empathy, of terrific kindness and rare love for his family. And yet its companion talent of expression is not part of his makeup. His tongue stumbles over words, and when he tries to express sympathy and compassion, he is aware of what a pompous windbag he sounds, and horrified he keeps silent, wishing desperately for his mother's gift of effortlessly enfolding people within her warmth, or even for his father's open hearted simplicity. And yet few know that Percy is not only a born student, but a born teacher, born with a willingness to distribute knowledge, and yet in groups he hesitates and slips up every time, his contemptible shyness and stiffness making him a mockery, a figure whose limbs do not move quite right, who does not fit together properly.

There are a few who have been recipients of his endless patience with mistakes, and the faithful hours he put into tutoring those who could not quite keep up, go unnoticed, though many a student has notes written in the crabbed handwriting so indicative of a personality trying to escape it's confinement, and can remember a lecture from a haughty redheaded boy which though brief cleared things up for them. But no-one ever says, because secretly they always believe they did it themselves.

**2. **There are maybe four people in the world who know that Percy loves to fly, though he can barely hold onto a broomstick, and heights make him nauseous. Before Hogwarts there were a couple of old brooms at home, but no-one really taught him how to fly. The one time he mounted it by himself, he misjudged the angles, and fell from twenty feet in the air, and broke four bones. They said it was lucky it hadn't been his neck. That was when he was seven, and he was in a leg brace until he was nine. He didn't touch a broom again until Hogwarts, when it leapt into his hand in his first flying lesson, and quivered for attention. He could feel the warmth thrumming beneath his fingertips, and it seems to mirror his heartbeat. He begins to shake, but Madam Hooch doesn't notice merely corrects his grip. It feels like he can do anything.

In his third year, Madam Hooch casually suggests trying out for Keeper on the Quidditch team- he was already tall, and she had noticed that he handled his broom with a rare gentleness and understanding, and Percy hesitates torn between wanting to accept, wanting to know what it felt like to be accepted and wanted, as an integral part of a team, to be actually _liked, _in a way that despite himself he had never managed to achieve. And yet two things prevent him. One is of course his studies. He doesn't have enough time to be top of every class, and carry on Quidditch as well, with it's innumerable practices, and time consuming extra curricular activities. The second is the tall Scottish boy who is the only other resident of the dorm, and who has already announced his intention to pursue the post, and the fervour in his eyes is such, that almost half shamed Percy backs down, and the words about maybe giving it a shot himself die unspoken in his throat, choking him like ashes.

There is nothing to match the feeling of being unfettered in the air, of being utterly free, of being somewhere where they can't catch him. He doesn't touch a broom after third year, except through pure necessity, and when his lover attempts in a playful mood to drag him on, he uses a few well placed words, that seal in the public conception that he has a phobia of flying. That he is _afraid_.

**3. **If asked what activity was Percy's favourite, probably the one most often turned up would not have been sex. Percy was not ugly by any concept, he was actually attractive in an unusual way, all milk white skin, and colour contrast, tall, and thin- his detractors said lanky, and yet his perpetual perceived pompousness and snobbish attitude to the school population, combined with the general opinion that he had a stick rammed right up his arse, did not seem conducive to an active sex life. As it happened there were only two people _within _Hogwart's walls who could dispute that fact. His girlfriend Penelope Clearwater, had slept with him several times before they broke up, was not the sort to kiss and tell with even her most intimate friends, but she did have a most intriguing smile after their encounters.

There was only one man within Hogwarts who could shatter that myth. Percy Weasley contrary to what he had expected from his reading matter on the subject had not gone through much of the supposed trauma of male adolescence, no embarrassing night dreams, few unexpected erections and little of the general male obsession with large breasts and nice arses. He quietly congratulated himself on his self control, and ignored the fact that his roommate's assets were much more interesting. At least until he was fifteen, and having figured out fairly swiftly that he appeared to be bisexual, and judging by his bodies reactions absolutely gagging for it, he decided with characteristic pragmatism to do something about it. He was attracted to Oliver Wood, and quickly he assimilated this, being realistic about his chances. Percy was under no illusions about his own attractiveness, and had serious doubts whether Oliver was batting for the other team, and solved this the way he solved most other things. Books. Professor Sprout willingly signed him a pass to the Restricted Section, and after a few hours browsing Percy found out much more than he had perhaps wanted to know about the more perverted spectrum of human sensuality. As it happened Oliver had approached him to begin with, had hesitantly suggested they explore somewhat. Percy had been hard put to keep from smiling.

Sex oddly enough became Oliver Wood's favourite activity after that as well. Percy had risen instinctively to the challenge posed- the mingled fear and fascination implicit in having sex with another man. When he is writhing on the hardness of what for the sake of appearance he calls a best friend, he laughs and thinks of what the rest of the school would think of this.

Oliver fucking Wood, member of a failing Quidditch team, all round golden boy of the house, fucking Perfect Percy, and then Oliver's hands tighten around white hips, and pull him that little bit closer, and the world dissolves into coloured shapes, he squeezes his eyes so tightly closed so he can't see himself doing this. Can't see the gentleness of tanned hands against him, of stolen kisses from an already ravaged mouth. He knows how to do this, it would appear years of book learning have paid off in the bedroom as well, and what he doesn't know he fakes. Oliver probably thinks he is wildly sexually adventurous, and yet in his mind Percy sees carefully coloured pictures which he methodically puts into action, until there is practically nothing he hasn't done, in the quiet of their room.

**4. **How many people know that Percy Weasley has raised the dead? That he took the final step from Necromancy, and raised the ghost of a mouse. It took him years in the Restricted Section to track down the book that instructed him. Necromancy was one of the Darkest of all arts, heavily policed and regulated, and so dangerous that to try it was more than foolhardiness it was a death sentence. Percy was careful, he conserved his strength for many months, and then he raised the mouse. The amount of energy it took was tremendous, and he could hold it's fleeting essence for seconds only before collapsing. Before he passed out, he performed the binding and protection spells necessary to prevent anything else from rising and escaping as well. He never told anyone about those few precious moments when he was God, when in his hands he held life that he himself had drawn back from the shores of the dead. When he was finished he burnt his robes, returned the books, and never dabbled in Necromancy again. There are those who need to prove something to themselves, to those who insist on doubting what is so obvious in their own minds. It did not matter that no-one else knows. It's a secret he hugs close to himself.

**5. **That Percy can love. Can love fervently and without reciprocation. Can love with all the strength and willpower that he poured so gladly into work. Can love like he used to fly; with wildness and abandon, and a joyful sense of freedom. That underneath shocking auburn hair, and a perpetually furrowed brow, there is a human being with dreams and aspirations that few would think to connect to him. He knows what people think, that his work means more to him than his family and his lover, means more than anything else possibly could. Yet he _does _love them. With desperation and a quiet sense of inevitability. He watches them, and protects them without them ever knowing. Fred and George never wondered why they hadn't been expelled several times over, didn't know that Percy kept an eye out, and cleaned up the worse pranks behind them, and several times faced Dumbledore himself to plead their case. Ron only passed some of his subjects due to the endless nagging of Percy during the summer to actually do the work, and Ginny cried on Percy's shoulder, the first time Harry seemed to reject her. Yet he was only part of the furniture, part of the general fabric of Weasley life. Then one morning he woke, and he was tired of it. Tired of being no-one and going nowhere.

It hurt that they hadn't begged him to stay.

It hurt that he didn't hear from them.

It didn't stop him loving them.

He loves quietly, because rejection hurts. He never says it first, his lover gave up long ago waiting to hear those three words, and eventually left him because of it. Percy doesn't cry, but he feels as though he could. Even when Oliver comes back, and they fuck as usual wherever they land, sofa, bed, sometimes floor, and all Percy can hear is his blood pounding in his veins, and Oliver's soft noises, then Oliver looks at him and there is _love _in gentle eyes, he can't say it. He wonders if that is the price he must always pay. Emotion with no means to express it. Then kisses are pressed to his mouth, and he can feel the half hesitant touches all over again, and he thinks that maybe he doesn't need to tell the world. Maybe it's just enough to feel it.

Reviews very welcome

A.W.


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